Limited Series

Christine Baranski. has reaped an Emmy bid as Best Drama Supporting Actress for each of the first five seasons of “The Good Wife” but has yet to win. As she told us during a recent webcam chat (watch below), her reward has been getting to play one part for so long: “You can take your character through a lot of stories and a lot of places emotionally. Learn how to be comfortable in front of a camera and grow into your character. The fact the work is recognized is exceptional.”

Baranski plays Diane Lockhart, an opinionated senior partner at a Chicago law firm. In this most recent season, she saw her firm go through upheaval as partner Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) resigned and her business partner Will Gardner (Josh Charles) was killed in a courtroom.

In this episode, both she and Alicia are in severe grief as they cope with the murder, and she is the one who must inform many of the firm’s employees and partners. Of that choice, she explains, “It was a lot of me in the episode. She had to walk into the law firm, and it was literally dealing with an event that had just happened and trying to still cope with dealing in the world of the firm. I thought that episode was interesting because you see Diane fire two people with an absolute laser-like clarity. Diane had no time for falseness or anything that wasn’t real.”

She now has an even dozen Emmy nominations. She won with her first bid for her scene-stealing featured role on the laffer “Cybill” back in 1995. Baranski won both her Tony nominations for Featured Actress in a Play (“The Real Thing,” 1984; “Rumors,” 1989). And she is a three-time champ at the Screen Actors Guild Awards: an individual win as Best TV Comedy Actress (“Cybill,” 1996) and two wins for Best Film Ensemble (“The Birdcage,” 1997; “Chicago,” 2003).